Tom Waits for No One

A vast number of things have prevented me from completing my voice banking. Changing acoustics in my office due to the move being the primary, but various other things have factored in, like the time my hard drive died and I lost the existing in progress file. I finally had it occur to me that work has phone booths, private little sound-muffled rooms. So I have brought my headset in to work, and finally – FINALLY! – started the process over.

And then this.

tom waits for no one 1

IT EXISTS.

Maybe you don’t know Tom Waits, and don’t care. That’s okay! You should go YouTube something of his and then imagine a digital voice like that. I said that I should make a tumblr for Tom Waits poetry inspired by the ModelTalker software prompts. It would be awesome. And then read that poetry with the Tom Waits digital voice, and the world would cease to be, because it’s just too cool for words. And voices.

I might continue to bug you guys with examples of the ModelTalker reading prompts though. They’re delightfully bizarre.

“The wolves surged to meet him.”

“He had rides in the wheelbarrow.”

“The grizzled old fellow could only see on one side.”

Oh, and the original line was “There’s another way you can get a tooth out.”

Genetic Go Ahead

As you may or may not remember, I was formerly denied genetic testing that would show if I had the genetic markers that would show if I’m a good candidate for trials. Since I’m on a different insurance plan, I asked if we could try and get approval again. Cigna said no, maybe Providence would say yes, since their own doctor fought so hard for it last year.

They said yes!

I’m not sure how much my portion of it will cost. I don’t really care, to be honest. I’ll afford it. There is a lot of exciting research being done right now, some promising results, and I’d love to be a data point among them.

I’m looking forward to having more information. To BEING information. I hope the tests allow me to participate. I hope I can be useful.

I hope this diagnosis is good for SOMETHING.

Wakey Wakey

A friend of mine, the one recently diagnosed stage 4, had a Celebration of Life party a couple of weeks ago. It was like a wake, only he was there.

I think that’s the coolest thing ever.

Wakes are always awesome in theory, you don’t mope and mourn, you throw a party! And talk about the good times! Yay! But there’s always a little regret; “Why didn’t I tell them this while they were alive”. And the cheer is forced, a bit. WE ARE TOTALLY HAVING A GOOD TIME BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT HE WANTED EVEN THOUGH I AM LEGIT SAD AND THIS IS SHITTY AND LOOKING AT ALL OF YOU TRYING TO KEEP YOUR SHIT TOGETHER IS MAKING IT WORSE. Or the “HOW CAN YOU BE HAPPY WHEN OUR LOVED ONE IS DEAD” crowd that just sit in the corner and sigh. They’re miserable at other parties, too. But the idea of a wake is excellent. Yes. Talk about the good times. Talk about how this person changed your life. Talk about the stupid way they used to sit in a chair and lean allllll the way back until you swore they would fall but they never did. Until that one time. And remember that laugh? Oh god. We got in SO MUCH TROUBLE that night. And allow yourself to miss them, and be sad, and be okay with it, but celebrate who they were, and be thankful that your paths crossed for awhile.

The idea is rad. So why don’t we do this while people are still alive? Someone is diagnosed with something awful, someone is going through a really shitty experience, something happens that is changing their life forever in a bad way, then help it all by throwing a party for the people that love them, invite them all to come and drink and talk about how amazing this person is.

Chad’s party was a little weird at first, like you’d expect. It’s a wake? But he’s here? Um. Wow. Okay. So we just…um. Wow, I don’t know a lot of these people. But we played a game, and they did a really awesome thing with the game to remember us all by, and it was fun. We got to talk, we got to eat, and it was a really, really fantastic excuse to get people to go out of their way for an evening to come and say hello. And for Chad it was probably awesome to have all the visits done in one shot – I know for me, anyway, coordinating visits with people is tiring, and the visits are exhausting, but you really, really love them so it’s worth it. But it would be fantastic to just show up somewhere for a couple hours and have people able to come over to you instead of scheduling ten million things and cancel some of them at the last minute because there’s no spoons or shit happened, or whatever.

So yes. Do that for your people. Divorce, diagnosis, moving far away, whatever. Uplift and encourage. WHILE THEY ARE AROUND TO APPRECIATE IT. It’s better to say this stuff to them while they’re still alive, still present, still able to have their entire day made by a kind word.

When I was diagnosed, and this amazing community sprang up around me, I listened and read while my friends told each other about how they came to meet me, how important I was, how awesome I am. As expected? Total ego boost. But I learned a lot of things I don’t think I’d ever have known. A friend of mine credited me with getting her into our social scene, because I was the only one of the CreepyKids who came over to say hello, so she was encouraged that we all didn’t hate her and it was okay for her to be among us. Which is weird to me, because I didn’t consider myself really IN that crowd, and it would never have occurred to me that I might ever be a gatekeeper to such a thing. But she said I was, and I did, and she never forgot. And I would never have known that.

I don’t know that I’ll ever have such a party, but of course there will be a wake sort of thing. And while talking to Danielle this morning, we determined there’s going to be party favor bags. With a pair of my socks, some stickers, a tiny Japanese thing, and a container of sprinkles. All things I have too many of. All things I adore. All little pieces of me, who I am, and what I like. I think that’s an awesome idea. Once upon a time I made a Happy Box Exchange, and I made little boxes full of things that made me happy. Music, stickers, little toys, sprinkles, candy, delicious scents. Things like that. I didn’t get all of the participants to respond back in kind, but the ones that did, came in FORCE. A baking care package. Another box in kind of all kinds of music and stickers and things. It was a really uplifting experience. Happy surprises.

So imagine that, only instead of stickers and candy, it’s memories and feelings. That would be the best thing ever.

You should do it.

Controversy and Community

I attended a symposium on ALS research today. As a result, my brain’s kinda full. Full of information, full of renewed energy to be a part of the solution, full of the obligatory introspection.

Oh, introspection. The knee-jerk “how does this all affect me” reaction to Serious Things.

So I apologize if this point is disjointed. My brain is random today and I’d really like to write up a full thing about the symposium and everything involved with it, I know that I probably won’t be arsed to do it. So instead, I’ma just barftype what’s on my mind. You’re warned. Two things come to mind, though, two main ideas that went through my brain repeatedly as I listened to three very, very smart people talk about advocacy, research, and a promising drug therapy, in their turns.

One? Thank god for science. Jeebus Christmastime flapjacks. The third speaker, specially, spoke about laboratory mice and their contributions, and the second spoke about stem cell therapy involving foetal spinal stem cells. Both highly controversial. Live animals, dead babies. Dead *potential* babies, I suppose, depending on your beliefs and politics. I don’t care to get into that. What I DO care about is how fucking USEFUL these research methods are, how sometimes really horrible things produce really amazing and life changing things, and how every day those decisions must be reevaluated. “Sacrifices must be made” is such simplistic bullshit, but I can not fathom how we’d get on without some of the amazing research and therapies and information that comes out of doing things not everyone agrees with.

I firmly believe that even the most staunch OMG DED BABIZ U MURDRER SINETISTS BASTURDS protester, if diagnosed with fast progressing ALS and told “there is promising research that may lead to a halt or reversal in your symptoms” will probably suddenly think that well, okay, maybe just ONE dead baby. That would be okay. One dozen babies in my spine to keep me walking and alive suddenly doesn’t seem so bad, I mean…Just as “NO YOU MUST LIVE WITH WHAT GOD GAVE TO YOU” might think differently about assisted dying. Until you are personally affected, until the decision could conceivably have some import to you personally, your opinion doesn’t carry much weight. You really, really don’t know, CAN’T know, what you really believe until it’s challenged and you face some really fucked up choices. While you’re safe from the consequences of that decision, you probably shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions for people who ARE affected. I’m looking at you, old white guys making reproductive rights decisions for women. And you, PETA person. If your kid had cancer, and I told you that 2000 mice have to die in order to give your kid a chance to live? I bet you’d be suddenly less enamored of mousey rights. Maybe skip the hypotheticals and ask people who actually DEAL with the consequence.

*stepping off the soap box*

Oh, idea one point five – saint preserve us from everyone who has “read an article”. Especially off of the internet. You guys pipe down, too. The three panelists do this for a living. They’ve probably read that article. There’s a reason it’s not called out in the slides.

Point two, and the main one, is amazement at the sense of community with ALS peeps. I have met, and kept in touch with, and care about, people I’d never in my life have met otherwise. I’m antisocial (despite what Danielle says (or at least highly socially avoidant)) and it was a bit weird to come to the symposium today and know some of the people there. Simply because we’ve been similarly touched by a disease. Nothing else in common. Just..yeah, I have this disease too, ain’t it shit? Diagnosis comes with an education, and ALS particularly comes with a community. People I see so infrequently, and yet we have something that connects us on a level that no one else could possibly share.

I learned today that a disease is considered “rare” if less than 200,000 Americans have it. The number thrown around for ALS is usually 30,000, but I also learned today that the ALS registry puts it at more like 12,000. That’s really not many. My employer has 17,000 employees in my area, for example. All Americans with ALS are outnumbered by people working in one metro area for one company. So when you find someone else in your area that even remotely understands, you take note of that person and make an effort to keep them around. There’s nothing like being able to share on a deep and intuitive level what you’re going through. Because even though other people might understand on a theoretical level, it’s a completely different thing to find someone that you can just make eye contact with and say, “Fucking ALS.” and they say “yeah.” and …yeah, to their very SOUL they know exactly what you mean. Because fucking ALS. And because you know how shitty it is, you feel similarly compelled to help someone else in the same position to make their situation suck less. So you stick together, and exchange ideas, and cry for each other, and celebrate the triumphs of perfect strangers with whom you only share one horrible, horrible affliction.

So I guess I have a better understanding of why Harry Potter/Supernatural crossover porn forums exist.

The Best Idea for the Worst Times

I love Emily McDowell’s greeting cards. Snarky, realistic, cheesy, and off the wall without being the office lady who wears all purple and warns the new hires, “You’ll have to watch out for me, I’m a little CRAAAZY!” A birthday card that says “Time to put out this tiny fire while you sing a song!” gets points with me. And a very succinct “Aaaaaahhh! You’re Getting Married!” card. It’s like she’s in my brain creating the cards I would make. I’ve loved them since they came to my attention a year or so back.

They’ve launched a new line of empathy cards. They’re amazing.

Most of them are geared towards cancer, but there are a few that would be just fine for the person in your life with ALS. Put lots of money inside.

I just wanted to point out that these exist, and they make me happy, and that I am so glad to see that there are people out there who get it, making products for those who maybe don’t. Including the simple, “There is no good card for this. I’m so sorry.” It rocks that people in outer circles have options to say when they have no words.

A is for Awareness

May is ALS Awareness Month.

Last year? Boooyyyyy HOWDY was I aware of it. It struck me as poetic timing, the month after my diagnosis was Awareness Month. That’s when I really began to tell people about my own diagnosis, that’s when I made my universe aware that this was happening. I became an expert in describing what it was and why it was bad and why it was going to be okay, really.

It was a harried, confusing time for everyone, and a month of big decisions. I still hadn’t decided to sell my house yet, or wait until my symptoms made it necessary. I decided ultimately to move on the sale, thinking I’d rather have the ability to make the new house mine than stick it out. Which is good, because already it’s impossible to carry things up the stairs with both hands. I ask people to carry things for me, when they can. Even emptying the litter box and taking it downstairs is a trial. So I’m very glad I started when I did.

This May, I’m aware of ALS. I’m aware of the changes it’s made, both in my physical ability, the outlook on certain things, and the way people interact with me. I’m aware of the strength I’ve lost. I’m aware of the independence it’s taking away from me. I’m aware of the sudden burden of time, watching it slip away, wanting to do as much as I can with it while at the same time wanting to do nothing at all and just rest. I’m aware of my friends coming to terms with the disease for themselves, and either stepping up or stepping down. Both are fine. Everyone carries this weight separately, and I’m proud of people for realizing early that this is too much to carry – I’d very much rather them know this now, than force themselves to hold up until they break. And suddenly the support beam below me is gone. It’s better for both of us to realize this now. I’m aware of the amount of freakin’ PAPERWORK involved with dying. The diagnosis should really come with an administrative assistant. Danielle is helping and doing a fantastic job, but it’s not fair for her to have to deal with the bureaucracy AND the emotions.

I’m aware of changes. I’m aware that I don’t have as much time as I’d like to think. 10% of people with ALS live longer than 10 years, and I firmly believe that I will be among them, but I’m no longer so certain that I WANT to be around that long, depending on the decline.

I’m aware, and in awe, of the love and the support that came seemingly out of nowhere. I’ve never in my life been so inspired by the people around me, overwhelmed by the willingness to sacrifice for me, so many questioning voices: “How can I help?”. I’m aware of the amazing group of individuals surrounding me, each with their own talents and lives to live, but somehow willing to reach out and be part of my problem. Willingly burdening themselves with a battle they know is already lost, but wanting to make the loss a little easier.

I’m aware of how amazing my life really is. And I guess, in a fucked up way, I’m thankful for ALS showing me all of this. I’m aware of how bizarre that seems. I mean, I’d still be very very happy if it fucked off forever, but I guess if it’s gonna kill me, the least it could do was show me a little mercy and awesomeness. Most people don’t get to know how much people actually care for them, and what impact people have felt from their existence. I’ve been shown that, and told that. I’ve heard many of the lovely things people say at your funeral, while I’m still alive. And because of that, I’m very aware of the need to show people appreciation and love while you’re still around. How important it is to tell someone without prompt that you adore them and you’re glad they’re a part of your life.

I’m aware of how cheesy that sounds.

Don’t care.

Today, I’m aware that I am a different person than I was a year ago, and will continue to change, but I will cling desperately to my optimism and humor and spit in Death’s face. Well, more of a girlyfight slappy flailing, spitting is gross. Eventually I’ll welcome her, but for now, I’m aware of so much more life that needs to be lived and so many more words to write. I’m aware of how much left there is to live.

Thank you all for being a part of it. I love you. I hope you’re aware of that.